Plants that can be grown indoors are commonly sought after for their decorative appeal, aroma, herbs, spices produced thereby, and for other reasons. Many people enjoy keeping plants within their home or office for ambiance. However these plants typically require regular attention and if not properly cared for they become ill or even die. Similarly, there are a number of people who keep plants about a patio or doorway for decorative appeal and other reasons. These too may best be served by automatic plant maintenance.
Plants require regular watering and most need added fertilizer or other nutrients. Busy schedules, work, traveling, vacation absences, and simple neglect can cause all of these and prevent a plant from being properly maintained. Thus, many people return to a sick or dead plant.
Since plants can be expensive and involve time and trouble to buy, transport, and transplant into planters; people are often hesitant to simply replace or keep replacing sick or dead plants if the same outcome will most likely befall the new plant or plants. Therefore, many people conclude they are unable or unwilling to enjoy and maintain plants. This is especially true for many locations within a building where conditions are not optimal. Thus, the plant enthusiasts are limited in where they place planters in most situations and are prevented from using a much greater variety of planters, plants, and plant locations.
Below are some common indoor plant needs along with how they generally effect the plant if not properly maintained.
Light is vitally important to plant life. Light exposure is necessary for the plant to go through photosynthesis, a process through which the plant uses the energy from incident light to produce sugars. The plant uses these sugars to sustain itself and grow.
Water is also necessary for plants, particularly the photosynthesis process, as well as many other functions the plant undergoes. Other constituents, such as a number of elements or other nutrients containing them are important for good plant living situations. Examples include elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and potassium are in many instances important to plant functions. Depending upon the plant, it may also need to a lesser degree calcium, magnesium and other trace or supplemental nutrients, including vitamins and hormones.
These chemicals are often present in the soil and the plant draws them as needed or to the extent they are available in the soil. As the life of the plant goes on these chemicals deplete from the soil and depending on the plant it may need supplementary feeding. Lack of or an over-abundance of these or other chemicals may cause visual and physiological changes to the plant. Discoloration, wilting leaves and other deterioration of the leaves or plant more generally are common to nutrient deficient plants and thus are worthy of being considered if you want a visually appealing plant.
It is also sometimes necessary that plants be provided with pesticides such as insecticides, fungicides, mildewcides and other plant disease inhibiting or eradicating chemicals. These may be applied directly or in an aqueous liquid solution or mixture which may also be used to water plants.
A common practice for providing plants with light is by placing them near a window so that sunlight will shine in on the plant. Some of the light will reflect off of other items in the room depending on their finishes and colors, but there will typically be a stronger exposure on the side closest to the window through which light beams or otherwise becomes incident upon the plant in question. This situation often causes the plant to stretch and lean, positioning itself to best receive this light. Such makes the plant look ill-proportioned and unsightly, hanging to one side of the pot or other planter. This leaning or lopsidedness of the plant to one side of a planter or pot is generally considered an unappealing condition or characteristic of plants. This is especially true for plants that drape over the edge of a planter, but is a problem encountered with almost all plants grown inside where there is non-uniform incident light to the plant.
All of the aforementioned problems along with others require regular maintenance of indoor plants to help prevent or fix the particular problem or problems associated with each site. Thus, it is difficult to know when placing a planter and plant, what the plant health is going to be and many plants are lost by attempts to place them in unsuitable locations.
Some people employ others to take care of their plants, especially during an extended absence. Such may be an expense and also can put the owner or their property at risk for allowing someone into their living or office space. This is particularly true when maintenance is performed during vacations, off-hours or when otherwise done unsupervised.
Some or all of the problems explained above and other problems may be helped or solved by the inventions shown and described herein. Such inventions may also be utilized to other currently unknown benefits which may be in the future appreciated from the novel inventions shown and described herein.